Intro:

Shortly after setting up Hacks/Hackers in early May, I received an email from Nathaniel James, News Innovation Program Manager at Mozilla, asking me if I would like to take part in an event in Dundee as part of their #mojo news innovation challenge. I got two links to explain: https://www.drumbeat.org/journalism & https://wiki.mozilla.org/Drumbeat/Mojo/meetups

Already reeling from the super-fast pace of finding out about Hacks/Hackers and setting up our own chapter in Edinburgh, this was a lot of awesome to take in at once. I was excited - and confused. After a few chats with organisers Dees (@cyberdees) and Jon Rogers at Dundee (@ileddigital) I got to grips with the situation: A Irn-Bru and pizza fueled extravaganza of news innovation and ideas-jamming. I was in and we all set about drumming up interest through blogs, twitter and word of mouth.

The eventbrite page filled up quickly (first hat-tip to Jon) and nearing the event we confirmed talks from the organisers. All set!

On the day:

After an absolutely glorious morning train journey to Dundee with my editor and partner in crime Marcus (@mkernohan) and getting lost, then found, then lost again, we finally arrived at our venue. I was greeted by Jon and an enormous stack of Irn Bru.

I helped myself to a few hangover-busting swills and met the rest of the organisers: Paul Egglestone (@digitaldocs) from the University of Central Lancashire and Dees and Michelle Thorne (@thornet) from Mozilla. Jon Rogers had filled the room with around 100 of his design students - we quickly agreed a running order of our talks and got down to it.

The talks:

First up was Jon with greetings and introductions and a short briefing, hilariously titled "online journalism 2011 - what the f£&k do we do?". Jon made an energetic and thoughtful host and impressed me throughout the day with his design insights and ideas (Hat tip #2). A perfect example of this as tweeted by an audience member:

What shape indeed. That one really caught my imagination.

Next was Dees introducing the quest - "Hack the Future of Journalism Online." and the challenges of the day with a short video:

Unlocking Video: Tell stories better w/ video online

Beyond Comment Threads: Re-invent commenting and discussion

People-Powered News: What would you build to make news better for the people who create and read it?

This was informative and great to put the events of the day in context.

I was up next, talking about the intersection of news and technology. I had brought a whole list of examples with me but the irn-bru was unable to cut through my devastating hangover and nerves and I wound up waffling about reddit for five minutes. :/ My point was to get the audience to think about the difference between qualitative and quantitative solutions - tech is more comfortable with quantitative solutions, while journalism is qualitative... or something like that.

At least someone in the audience was able to sum it up in a way that made sense in less than 140 characters, which is a win.

The congregation migrated to the "Jute Bar" (a perfect space for the event) and split up into groups for the first idea's jamming session - the 'flip out'. Jon had arranged video cameras for the smartphoneless and groups were to put together short film clips about their ideas. Superb.

I stayed on and had a short conversation with Paul about his projects, specifically "Bespoke" where they have been equipping low-income community members with phones and twitter accounts. Truly incredible stuff. Anyone interested in the future of news keep an eye on Paul.

A few cups of coffee later (no curative effect whatsoever) I made my way into the Jute Bar to float around the groups and see where I could help. Things were looking good:

All the necessary ingredients for brainstorming: Irn Bru, laptops, post-it notes, cameras, notepads and good old fashioned humans. It warms the heart.

The first group I encountered were ahead of the game - they were slicing into the anatomy of a comment thread, picking out the aggressive trolls, useless lolsers, OPs and serious commenters and trying to make sense of how we can balance out these roles to encourage rather than stifle debate. They also had the benefit of one of the most prodigious idea sketchers I've ever seen. The guy was a wizard.

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the other ideas: a personalized newspaper dispenser (youspaper), location based news story sharing, source tracking for news articles and many more.

A few things struck me immediately. Firstly, Jon's students were very polite, some of them even went as far as to tell me that they enjoyed my talk. Too kind (Hat tip #3 to Jon). Secondly, the sophistication of the process and the ideas that came out of it was very high. The mojoers all worked incredibly well together and the abstraction of ideas was coming thick and fast. Finally, everybody could draw, which was amazing. While sitting down with all the groups, the pace at which ideas could be shared and understood was much faster than I am used to, because everybody would just grab a notepad or post-it note and visually represent the idea.

And then there was pizza (things slowed down a bit).

Next up: interim presentations. Groups went around the room one by one to share their ideas and cross pollinate ideas.

One of the presentations was almost too much to handle in my state - a  send-up of the Subterranean Homesick Blues video ON AN IPAD:

I digress. Once the interim presentations were complete the groups went full steam ahead tightening up their ideas, getting them ready for final presentations and the judging panel, where the prospect of beer or no beer hung in the balance.

Somewhere in the proceedings this video surfaced: Anatomy of a Comment Thread. Instant hit.

Hilarious. Watch it again.

Between doing some ideas jamming myself with @mkernohan, some great chats with Dees, Michelle, Jon and Paul - it was time to sit on high with Michelle and Jon and assess the contributions. Jon sat down wearing his design task-master hat and Michelle and I were looking for ideas that were feasible, new and engaging. There was a hefty pile of beer tokens up for grabs and before long there was a considerable queue leading up to our table.

The ideas

Again I was blown away with the visual quality of the ideas. Jon had the participants meticulously design their ideas on flash-cards and would send them away if they were sloppily drawn. Rightfully so, the best ideas also had the care of a good design built into them.

Nearly every idea was beerable. Highlights were: "dig deeper" - a zoomable representation of sources and reactions of articles discussions, an article tree where comments were branches and sources roots, news stories printed on receipts, personalized print editions and a whole host of iphone and tablet apps that make commenting and sharing articles easy. 

Themes were almost completely covered: automation, personalization, crowdsourcing, distribution, quality, sourcing et cetera. One thing I thought was conspicuously absent was the role of the 'community'. It was touched on with 'anatomy of the comment thread', but never mentioned explicitly. Online communities are fascinating and unruly beasts, and presumably will play a big part of the future of news online. Anyone with a community idea please correct me.

With my small amount of experience as a founder and startup publisher, I felt like a fair few of the ideas were also very marketable, on top of being fanstastic. I hope that every single one of those ideas got uploaded for consideration.

Check out Mozilla's individual entries page for a better depiction of the ideas people have generated for the challenges: